These characters are born with The Gift that just makes every character in the same field look bad by comparison. They were born with something special: this character could have an instinctual grasp of the techniques that take other characters years to master, maybe he or she is a natural Lightning Bruiser with little to no training at all. A character with The Gift need not be physically gifted. If the story revolves around science or school, expect a person with the Gift to be impossibly smart, to the point that his/her peers are struggling to make sense of the person's doodles. You think you're good? Well this guy is just innately better. Many times The Mentor of these characters will near worship The Gifted because of this talent, falling over themselves to teach these characters. The teacher may favor this character at the expense of other students. The character may even be The Ace if they're just that much more talented than everyone else.

Finding your own version of this trope, through hard work, is one of the components of Japanese Spirit.

Having a gift but maintaining it through training, research, and working (or risk wasting it) makes you Talented, but Trained.

Not to be confused with either the 2015 film starring Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, and Joel Edgerton, the 2000 film starring Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves or the Portuguese alternative rock band.

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Examples

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Anime and Manga

Most of the main characters in Naruto, starting with the Uchihas (yes, all of them) and former Big Bad Orochimaru and working from there. It's really more notable when characters considered "geniuses" don't turn evil than when they do.

Naruto himself is a subverted example. If you believe Lamarck Was Right, then he technically always had great potential; however, most of his power is owed to being the host of the Nine Tails, who he of course was not naturally born with. However, his son, the eponymous protagonist of Boruto, is a straight example; much like his grandfather the Fourth Hokage, he was simply born a prodigy.

Kongo Agon of the Shinryuuji Nagas is another advanced example. He's described as a once-in-a-century football prodigy, capable of reacting in 0.1 second to any move the opposing team makes, as fast as physically possible. He never goes to practice and never exercises, at all, in sharp contrast to his brother Unsui, who trains tirelessly every day but can't keep up with him. Deimon managed to throw Agon a loop by sending in benchwarmer Manabu Yukimitsu, who managed to overtake Agon through sheer determination and tenacity. Oh, and he's practically the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Opposing Sports Team.

There's also Takeru Yamato, the real Eyeshield 21 from Notre Dame. Gifted both physically and mentally, he's the star player of the Teikoku Alexanders, Japan's best high school football team. To give you an idea of how good he is, Kongo Agon challenged him to a one-on-one match, and lost.

Finally, Donald "Mr. Don" Oberman of Team USA overshadows everyone in terms of being gifted. He's a giant of a man who possesses inhuman strength and speed, is very intelligent and fluent in multiple languages, is charismatic enough to win legions of fangirls, and is the son of the US president. His hobby seems to be putting lesser beings in their place, especially in the football field, where he casually curb-stomps opponents while lamenting of how futile it is to challenge "chosen ones" like himself.

Brooklyn of Beyblade fits this to a tee. Thanks to a savant-level natural talent at playing spinning tops, he's never had to try in his entire life. On the one hand, far from making him an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy, he's actually a pretty nice guy who approaches the game with a zen-like calmness. On the other, when he's finally defeated for the first time, he actually starts trying... and the results are not pretty at all.

Yujiro Hanma from Baki the Grappler is by far the most talented character in the series. He was born with so many gifts his birthday might as well be Christmas. He has become increasingly bored in his later years since no one can offer him a decent fight. He became so desperate that he fathered a child and put him through hell in the hopes he would offer a challenge. Yujiro even threatened his son Baki that if he doesn't live up to his expectations that he would repeat the whole process over with Baki's children

Negi Springfield is often called 'Prodigy' or 'a Genius' thanks to his ludicrous growth, amazing smarts and innate ability to master many fighting styles. Neither brash nor overconfident, he's instead insecure, self-sacrificing, somewhat power-hungry with a noted inferiority complex, which eventually causes him to choose the powers of darkness to prevent harm to his students, in that sparing himself unnecessary pain at losing more loved ones. His lonely disposition has yet to be fully confronted, though he occasionally gets accused of being a Martyr Without a Cause.

Later on we get introduced to Kurt Godel, who's also described as a prodigy/genius. Unlike Negi, he's a Smug Super and is the epitome of the Wild Card.

Berserker of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple poses the danger he does entirely because of this. Berserker is so naturally talented in martial arts that he can defeat the best of his peers despite not having had any formal training whatsoever. His defeat requires a massive aversion of Hard Work Hardly Works, with Hermit claiming to have put in 10,000 times the normal effort. Unfortunately, a later chapter of the manga suggests he has since received that formal training.

Chikage also has this, being referred to as a prodigy. Unlike Berserker on the other hand, Chikage not only has the incredible talent, but she has been raised by an excellent master since birth, whereas he relied on natural ability for most of his life.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica puts a particularly dark spin on this. The titular character is noted early on to have vast potential as a Magical Girl. Too bad this means her eventual, inevitable transformation into her Superpowered Evil Side will destroy the world if she contracts and activates her powers. Despite the fact that she is a sweet, innocent, trusting person with a low opinion of herself, her Gift has the potential to wreak more destruction on the Earth than that of most other examples. The story also makes it absolutely clear that she wasn't even "special" in the ways that this trope often implies, given that her status as the Chosen One is an unintended side-effect of another person's actions, rather than even the standard "fate" or Superpowerful GeneticsHand Wave.

From Katanagatari, we have Yasuri Nanami, the main character's Ill Girl older sister. Let's count the ways: first, she's so naturally strong and talented that her father, the head of the most deadly swordsmanship school of the era, had literally no idea how he could possibly teach her. This, and not her frail body or gender, is the only reason she isn't the head of Kyotouryuu. Her body absolutely refuses to let her die, even though she herself would like nothing better. She can completely read the moveset and secrets of any martial art by seeing someone take a stance in it; and moreover instantly learns any technique by seeing it once, and masters it by seeing it twice (or performing it herself once) - even if that technique involves restructuring her own body on the fly. And finally, the ultimate goal of this utterly broken Power Copying is to take her further away from using her own strength and skill so that Shichika can finally kill her, because otherwise he'd have no chance.

Bleach: Ichigo has an innate fighting talent that allows him to develop his combat abilities at a truly phenomenal growth rate. He was able to become capable of fighting, and defeating, lieutenants and captains after just ten days training. He was able to achieve Bankai in two and a half days, and within the space of only a couple of months in total, he went from being a powerless person who could see ghosts to being capable of defeating a god-mode Aizen. All the various powers his mixed heritage has given him merely distract from the fact that his combat ability is completely innate. Various characters in the manga have lampshaded this, observing time and again that combat training doesn't work on him and that his ability to fight isn't evidence of heritage or training but of instinct. Even when he loses all his powers, his combat instinct makes him incredibly good at handling unsavoury humans such as thieves.

Akagi won his first match in mahjong at the age of 13 after a ten-minute introduction to the rules. A few hours later he had defeated a professional rep player for some Yakuza who was cheating and backed up by the other two players. Things only got better from there. The manga repeatedly references just how unnaturally skilled Akagi is at gambling in general, and particularly in Mah Jong, to the degree he's almost killed once for failing to lose. In Ten, where he has been a gambler for over thirty years, he is renowned for having never lost a game in his life.

Mikasa Ackerman from Attack on Titan is described as a prodigy of unparalleled talent, with a natural mastery in all her subjects. She's still out-shined by in-series World's Strongest Man Levi, though, although it's possible she may grow past him with combat experience. They may actually be related too. Their 'gift' is apparently a unique trait of the Ackerman bloodline.

Hajime no Ippo There are three boxers in the series that are far beyond the rest of the cast:

Takamura is stated by the author to be the best boxer in the series and when he was found by his coach was considered a "diamond that didn't need to be polished". His fights are usually one-sided affairs and played for laughs but one of his opponents, Bryan Hawk, actually had more talent than Takamura; so much more that he gave Takamura his hardest match in the series. Takamura won, but it was partly because Bryan Hawk never trained for any of his fights and relied on his raw talent while Takamura alwaystrains his hardest for fights.

Woli from Indonesia. He is by far the character with the most raw talent, out stripping even Takamura and Bryan Hawk. It took him only three fights to become the Indonesian champ and he gave the main character, Ippo (who at the time had 22 fights and had defeated multiple national champions), a very tough fight. Ippo's coach stated that they would never fight Woli again as a second fight would end in Ippo's loss since the only thing Woli was lacking was experience.

Ryuuhei Sawamura arguably qualifies as well. He is a genius counter puncher, and unlike Miyata, who's counter punches leave him at risk of being clobbered if he messes up, Sawamura's are low risk, high reward counters. If Sawamura wasn't so sadistic about unnecessarily torturing his opponents, be could have easily become a champion long ago.

Vegeta likes to think he was born with the gift, being a prince from a race of proud warriors who boast about being the strongest in the universe. It does not help that he was more or less called special by all those who knew him, even his Bad Boss Frieza. He is not too far off. He is extremely talented and reach levels that none in his race could comprehend. However, Goku has a greater gift for fighting, being able to outpace Vegeta no matter how hard he trains. During the Cell and Buu Sages he states that Goku has a gift, something he denied before by calling Goku low class trash. By the end of the series Vegeta had to fully admit to himself that Goku was the superior fighter. Even then, both Vegeta and Goku's gifts are outpaced by Gohan who can easily become the strongest in the universe if he desired it.

Frieza himself has by far the most natural fighting ability of any non-god character in the series, even more than Gohan or Goku. Before losing to Goku he'd literally never trained in his life and was still one of the strongest beings in the universe. After being revived, it only takes him four months of training to surpass even Buu and be a match for a Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan, the same power allowed Goku to fight a semi-serious God of Destruction Beerus on roughly even terms. If Frieza had bothered to train regularly for years, literally no one would have been able to beat him.

In Black Clover, Aster's best friend and fellow orphan Yuno has incredible magical potential. When the time came to receive a Grimoire, Yuno was chosen by a Four-Leaf Clover Grimoire, the highest level Grimoire of them all. Aster on the other hand, has absolutely no magical potential. Nonetheless, Yuno still looks up to Aster for his courage and determination and considers him to be a worthy rival.

Shiro of No Game No Life is of the 'intelligent' sort. As in, she's basically a staggeringly powerful supercomputer that just happens to look like an 11-year-old girl. She's said to be able to beat any chess-computer with absolute certainty, since she's capable of considering every possible game-state simultaneously - essentially doing the same thing they do, but better. In an FPS, she outright seems to be cheating due to her ability to instantly calculate the trajectories of every shot fired by both herself and her opponents, allowing her to dodge bullets and pull off crazy ricochet shots. Even Sora, who is a genius in his own right - particularly in 'softer' areas, such as predicting and manipulating human behavior - considers himself average-at-best compared to her, and indeed sees her as a shining example of human potential.

She's also appropriately isolated by this incredible talent - she could speak fluently before she turned one, and was basically raised in a lab beyond that, aceing IQ-test after IQ-test (effectively making her IQ imeasurrable) - leaving the adult, highly-educated scientists surrounding her to realize that this mere infant indubitably was smarter than all of them... possibly 'put together', to boot. Sora was essentially the first one to treat her as a person, rather than some scientific curiosity or test-subject (her parents included, and as a result, she feels heavily detached from humanity as a whole.

In My Hero Academia, Katsuki Bakugo is absurdly talented at everything he puts his mind to. He's naturally athletic, a gifted student, and born with a rare and powerful Quirk along with excellent reflexes to use it. He has an instinctive grasp of making calls in the field on top of being able to learn how to do anything if he wants to. He was so much better than all of his peers growing up that he was treated as The Ace, which stoked his ego to the point that he became an irritable Jerkass with a Hair-Trigger Temper.

Kishou Arima from Tokyo Ghoul is athletically and intellectually gifted, but where he really shines is his profession as a ghoul investigator. He is readily acknowledged as the greatest one to have ever lived, has by far the largest extermination rate of any investigator, and at no point in the series does anyone come close to actually defeating him. He is even shown in a flashback to have defeated the One-Eyed Owl, the most powerful ghoul on record. He allows Kaneki to defeat him in Re, but this was all part of his plan and he openly taunts him during their fight that he could have killed him hundreds of times over already and is simply drawing it out for his own reasons.

Comic Books

Inverted in Marvel's G.I. Joe continuity. Snake-Eyes, a white friend of the family, is regarded by the masters of the Arashikage ninja clan as being their most gifted and promising student. He stays good (probably partly because the masters don't tell him this to his face), but his friend, Storm Shadow, a blood member of the clan who had trained with them since childhood, becomes embittered at being constantly thought of as coming up short compared to his friend.

Moondragon is a classic case of this. Orphaned by the renegade Thanos of Titan, she was brought up on his homeworld and instructed in physical and mental disciplines for which she proved to have considerable talent. She got proud enough to challenge the Dragon in the Moon and apparently proved good enough to destroy it, which did not help. At her best she is insufferably arrogant (being almost That Damned Good to boot), and when the DitM's influence surfaces she lapses into full-blown Megalomania. Life with her new girlfriend seems to have mellowed her... somewhat.

The Gorgon, of Marvel Comics, is a ridiculously advanced case. He could read and write by his first birthday. By four, he was one of Japan's most acclaimed artists. He composed his first opera at age six. At twelve, he wrote a mathematical equation that proved the existence of God. He became a ridiculously-skilled martial artist in adulthood, as well. He's also one of the most bugfuck insane guys out there, and is fanatically devoted to the evil Hand. Oh, and he can also turn you to stone by looking at you. His actions so frequently cause "WHAT NOBODY IS THAT [good/fast/strong/silent]!" reactions that "Wrong. The Gorgon is that [whichever previous adjective]" is practically his Catch-Phrase. After Wolverine barely defeated and killed him by reflecting his own stone gaze back at him, the Gorgon was resurrected by the Hand even more powerful.

Film - Animated

There are more than a few echoes of this in how Master Shifu treats Tai Lung in Kung Fu Panda—and true to form, seeing only the snow leopard's incredible natural talent for kung fu (he was after all the only one to master all one thousand scrolls) the guy proudly pumps him up to be the Dragon Warrior, all without seeing the darkness that was growing in his son's heart. Though Tai Lung turned evil, he luckily didn't indulge in a great deal of Wangst. You can guarantee, though, that if he didn't die in the final battle, shows up in a sequel, and does a HeelFace Turn, he will become either an Ineffectual Loner (which he may well have been before his Start of Darkness) or thanks to Defeat Means Friendship, an Aloof Big Brother to Po.

Remy of Ratatouille is something of a subversion: he possesses the gift of incredible cooking skills, but unlike the examples here nobody looks up to him or is envious of it because he's a rat, who don't need to cook and aren't allowed in kitchens anyway. When he's able to express his gift by being The Man Behind the Man of a human, he gets taken advantage of: his rat clan uses him to steal food from the kitchen while his human "puppet" (who couldn't boil spaghetti without Remy's help) takes all the credit.

In The Book of Life, Manolo's father lampshades in the beginning that he has the gift of bullfighting.

Film - Live-Action

Played with in The Matrix. The Oracle's comment to Neo about him not being the One ("Sorry, kid. You've got the gift, but it feels like you're waiting on something.") may seem like a confirmation of Neo's fears, but it actually leads into some foreshadowing of his eventual fate ("Your next life, maybe. That's how these things usually work." and "One of you is going to die." and can be seen as clever manipulation to hook Neo into the path she wants him to take.

Sing, the eventual protagonist of Kung Fu Hustle, had tremendous chi reserves in his body for his entire life, which he subtly sets up for the climactic fight scene by recovering from a serious stab wound, concussion and poisoning, in the span of about an hour, then casually mentioning that he's never had to go to a hospital in his life. Only after a near-death experience (that is to say, the Big Bad delivered sufficient damage that the surprisingly powerful wise old men had to mummify him) was he able to use it consciously.

In the Star Wars Sith, Jedi, and anyone who is capable of the force are by default Gifted. But there are a few that take it the another level:

Luke and Anakin Skywalker in their respective Star Wars trilogies. The Force was strong with those ones.

Kvothe from "The Kingkiller Chronicle" is an advanced example of this trope. An unrivaled prodigy, his intellect is such that he can learn complicated concepts in days when would take even the most intelligent people months or years. He has learned a language in less than two days, runecrafting in a week, and joined the greatest university by the age of 15. And that is just the beginning. By the time he is an adult he is a living legend.

In the Tortall Universe books, there is a subversion on two levels. In the first, just about half the population has "The Gift", and it's actually called that. What it is is basically the ability to use magic — and that's it. Some of them ''do'' think they're better than everyone and two are the Big Bad of their series, but most are decent and nice. The second subversion, closer to the trope idea, is wild magic; a much rarer 'gift' which has specific abilities. The only characters to have this (Daine and Tobe) are The Hero and a different hero's Side Kick.

Harry Potter: A theme in the series is about what individuals with incredible gifts choose to do with them. And, why you don't necessarily need them to become great:

From a very young age, Tom Marvolo Riddle was treated as an amazing prodigy and given special preference and instruction. Yet all he chose to do with his gift was pursue immortality, killing hundreds of people in the process. In the end he dies in his fifties, probably younger than he would if he'd lived a peaceful life.

Dumbledore had incredible abilities from an early age. Unlike Voldemort he mostly used them for good, except for a period in his teenage years that haunted him for the rest of his life. He reflects while talking to Harry that he never trusted himself with power again.

Harry is notable for not having the gift, despite being the title character. He's a decent wizard, sure, but he pales in comparison to Hermione and, when he was the same age, Snape, He gets by on ingenuity, courage and some good broom flying skills

In The Wheel of Time series, some channelers require training and others have this, such as Nynaeve. Wilders (as 'gifted' channelers are known) are no more likely to turn evil than any others, they just have a harder time accessing their power before they undergo special training to break their 'block' that's sealing the power away.

Flipped in Thief of Time with Lobsang Ludd, who is naturally great at both the theory and practice of time manipulation. None of the teachers among the History Monks like him, because you can't teach someone who already knows everything.

In The Dresden Files, while anyone can learn some magic, only a few have the inherent gift of being able to instinctively feel and use magic on their own, and thus can become full-fledged wizards.

John Rumford in Victoria is a non-supernatural example. Much like Ender Wiggins in Ender's Game, Rumford is socially awkward, mildly eccentric, ruthless, and often hostile to authorities, yet a charismatic leader and military genius of such rare raw natural ability and talent that his whole nation's fate eventually comes to depend on him.

Live-Action TV

River Tam of Firefly is a genius prodigy who can basically do anything she puts her mind to with incredible ease, and was already in some form of college by the time she was 14. As her brother Simon puts it, "River wasn't just gifted... she was a gift." After her Mind Rape, she is still extremely intelligent and talented, but it's often hidden behind many layers of insanity.

Sylar of Heroes has the power of "intuitive aptitude", and thus is able to rapidly master new superpowers over the course of a few days, whereas the people he takes them from tend to suffer from How Do I Shot Web? or Superpower Meltdown even after living with their powers for several months. Then again, he has to crack open people's skulls and take their brains to get the powers in the first place, so the "evil" part is kind of a chicken or the egg thing with him. Compare the heroic Peter Petrelli, who also can absorb powers (without stealing brains) but is pretty incompetent with them and needs to spend considerable time training to get them to work properly.

Troy Barnes from Community has the Gift— for plumbing and air-conditioner repair. Considering that in their world, air conditioning repairmen secretly control the world, its kind of a big deal.

Morgana Pendragon from Merlin (2008) When she finally accepts her magical powers, sometime between seasons three and four, she becomes a High Priestess after one year of training. She eventually becomes a serious threat to Merlin, who is the most powerful Warlock in history. She is a skilled swordswoman and is always able to get her hands on an army.

Arrow: It only took eight years for Oliver Queen to go from useless playboy to World's Best Warrior. Granted, a majority of those eight years were comprised of Training from Hell and multiple near-death experiences, but even then, that shouldn't have been enough to kill a man who had several centuries worth of experience over him. The only viable explanation is that Oliver was born to fight, and is a combat prodigy with talent only seen once in a lifetime.

Tabletop Games

Ars Magica has this at the center of its premise. Magical ability (referred to as the gift) instantly puts the primary player character class, magi, above the rest of the mundane world. This is reasonable enough; its setting, Mythic Europe, is a world of medieval beliefs after all. However, while the magi of the Order of Hermes swear an oath not to do anything that deprives another magus of his right to arcane power, or brings the ire of the mundane authority on the Order as a whole, any given mage is perfectly within his or her rights to abuse anyone who isn't a mage at their leisure, including their own apprentices. A particular list of legal cases includes the case of one mage who tortured several of his apprentices to death and was found to have committed no crime.

As with the above, Unknown Armies has the gift of magic being incredibly rare. The thing is, it tends to cause Adepts to become... well, insane. The technical definition is that they become obsessed with things like taking risks, cutting themselves up, or saving money, to the exclusion of all else. Oh, and the only reason mages aren't ruling the world is because they're terrified of what could happen when the world finds out about magic. Otherwise, their obsessions and magic cause them to look down on normal people, referring to them as sheep.

The ability to use magic -just plain magic as well as summoning- is called "The Gift" in Anima: Beyond Fantasy

The Planeswalker's Spark in Magic: The Gathering is something that one either is born with, or isn't. It is possible to transfer a Spark from one being to another, however.

Video Games

In Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Adelle is one of "The Gifted", which grants her such boons as an extremely extended lifespan, unique abilities and near-instant mastery of (non-combat) skills. While she never falls into outright evil (except for a brief moment when she is Brainwashed and Crazy), The Gift causes her a large amount of angst towards the fact that it makes her "different".

Knights of the Old Republic plays with the trope, but it still ends up used straight: the player character learns the ways of the Force very, very quickly, "learning in weeks what has taken others years". Later in the game, there turns out to be an explanation for that - but that explanation means that the player character is Revan, who before that revelation had been described as a bit of a prodigy, and rather powerful.

In X Com Enemy Unknown, the Psychic Powers is this. It's rare and can only be found by psychic testings, although those with higher Will have a better chance of having it. Appropriately, it's also called 'The Gift' in-game.

Averted in the sequel X Com 2, as any unpromoted recruit may be trained to become a Psi-Operative by spending several days in the Psi-Lab.

In the Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk series, to use a traditional alchemy that involves the cauldron you need the natural talent or gift for it which invovles a special kind of intuition to use with like Ayesha, Escha and the Shallies. Alchemists like Logy and Miurca don't have this natural talent thus need to resort to the newer alchemy method that involves specialized equipment that don't need the person to have this natural talent thus anyone can technically use it.

Visual Novels

Kinda deconstructed in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, as it's becauseLeonKuwata is so crazy-talented at baseball that he doesn't see why anybody would need to practise or work on it because he's so ridiculously good at it without trying, leading him to resent the boring routine of training and wanting to branch out from being Ultimate Baseball Star and do something else. He does like playing baseball at heart, along with the perks of free scholarships and attention from girls, but he goes to great lengths to distance himself from it.

This extends to pretty much every character in the series that goes to Hope Academy or is trapped in these contests. Everyone is the Ultimate something and are at the top of their respective fields. While many of the characters are over-the-top gifted; the series does explore, deconstruct, and reconstruct the themes of being exceptionally talented in a situation where most of these characters talents are useless, especially for a murder mystery game

Web Comics

Tower of God - 25th Baam's incredible Shinsoo resistance and his huge talent for learning Shinsoo techniques. While it's true that he himself was very pure-hearted, his immense talent drew a lot of jealousy towards him and made some of his "friends" develop crushing inferiority complexes that led to soul crushing events.

Others whoever were awed by his power and decided to risk their lives to follow him (Koon, Rak, and everyone who survived the tests.). That was the original plan anyway.

Even after Baam's "death" the team still decided to stick together to honor his memory.

All the irregulars who ever entered the Tower are gifted in such a way that they are considered a combination of Humanoid Abomination and Person of Mass Destruction. They are considered so dangerous and so rare that an Irregular is thought by many as sign of great upheaval.

In the Dilbert animated series, he tells Dogbert that he has "The Knack" (for engineering.) He accidentally drinks his boss's coffee, gets 'management germs,' and loses it for an episode. Hilarity Ensues.

In Avatar: The Last AirbenderAzula and Toph are both among the most naturally gifted/talented characters in the series. Azula was born as a child prodigy but Toph is blind and learned how to depend on other senses, which just made her an unnaturally good earth bender. The former is Daddy's Little Villain and the latter is a loner who requires an entire season to soften up to her True Companions. Katara is a subversion; she taught herself waterbending and became a master soon after finding a master to formally train her. Aang is an inversion. His gift means it's his job to save the world. Zuko is played with. He doesn't possess the gift, but that's precisely what makes him special since it made him who he is.

Twilight Sparkle in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is a unicorn whose unique magical talent is magic. Princess Celestia — a thousand-year-old Physical Goddess — says that Twilight has the greatest magical potential she has ever seen in a unicorn. In the pilot Twilight does come off as slightly arrogant and dismisses the future members of her True Companions as silly fillies who are getting in the way of her efforts to stop Nightmare Moon. Much of the series is devoted to Twilight coming out of her sheltered bookworm lifestyle. A few episodes also deconstruct this trope by showing that Twilight can't always control her vast magical power.

About half of the Manes have some form of The Gift. Aside from Twilight, Rainbow Dash is such a skilled flyer that she smashed records left and right when she attended a training camp, and Fluttershy is so good with animals that she can actually talk to them. While the other Manes are skilled at their chosen professions, they aren't on a plateau like those three.

Rarity's thing is being a clothing designer; even the pony equivalent of Michael Jackson comes all the way to Ponyville to have Rarity custom-make her outfits. Applejack is a farmer, and her green thumb is to the degree that that she can hold a seed with a clod of dirt around it in her hooves and make it grow. Pinkie Pie takes Fun PersonifiedUp to Eleven, to the degree that she lives by cartoon physics, as well as being Ponyville's premier event planner. While not as glamorous as Twilight's magic, they're all the best around at what they do.

Basically, every pony has this trope at something. After closer to 30 than 20 years of the franchise's existence, those symbols on their flanks are explained: your 'cutie mark' represents your special talent and everyone has one. "Blank flanks" have not discovered their special talent yet. Those are typically quite young, and getting yours has been used as a puberty metaphor at least once.

Real Life

Bo Jackson was, and still is, considered to be one of the most talented athletes in the history of sports. He is the only athlete in history to become an All-Star in two professional American sports. The only person that beats his talent is...

...Jim Thorpe. He won Olympic gold medals in both the Pentathlon and Decathlon, and played at the professional level in Baseball, Basketball, and American Football.

Just to hammer home how extraordinary and versatile Thorpe's abilities were, he led his college team to an 18-15 victory against Harvard (one of the best teams in the country at the time)...while playing four positions and scoring all of the points himself. As Dwight D. Eisenhower put it:

"Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw."

Muhammad Ali was born with incredible speed, reflexes, and coordination. His coach Angelo Dundee trained him in an unorthodox way; instead of telling Ali what to do, Dundee instead just let him do what he felt was natural and simply 'suggested' things to do. Ali would simply do them.

Similarly, hailing from the other side of the Earth, we had Bruce Lee who was, according to his peers, pound-for-pound the strongest and fastest, not to mention best, martial artist in the world, standing at a level most humans are unable to achieve even with a lifetime of training.

People with The Gift outside of martial arts include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who, when he was no more than fourteen-years-old, was taken to a performance of Allegri's Miserere and, upon returning to his lodgings, wrote down the entire piece from memory. And that was nine years after he wrote his first composition. We'll repeat that: Mozart wrote a Minuet and Trio in G major when he was five-years-old.

And while on the topic of classical music, we cannot leave out Ludwig van Beethoven, who was, and still is, to this day, considered one of the greatest musical composers of all time. Just listen to his 9th Symphony and try to remember: He was stone deaf when he wrote that, and still he wrote everything, from the loudest, most bombastic brass segments, to the softest, most hushed flute segments; he wrote everything that each and every single separate instrument should play. While! Deaf!

Ayrton Senna, the Brazilian race driver who was known as one of the top five best Formula One racers in history. He was known for outperforming teammates and driving impossibly fast in any given car. Other than being naturally talented, he was also a very dedicated and sophisticated, if very aggressive, driver. His personality also responded to the fan base very well.

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